For those of you who weren't a teenage girl in the late 90's or mid 2000s, TRL is a live music video request show where gaggles of fans would crowd around, scream as their favorite artists were played on MTV. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)

"At its very heart, "TRL" was the first television show that turned the camera squarely on the audience. It made them the stars of the show -- they dictated where it went and what videos made the cut . . . "TRL" was the first program of its kind that could turn on a dime, could begin as one thing on a Monday and by Friday be something completely different. . . And that sentiment, that sense of spontaneity and that viewer-controlled flexibility is what made YouTube into the culture-defining thing it is today."

And as Montgomery points out, that same trend it kicked off is the one that eventually made it obsolete. After all, on YouTube, you can DJ your own TRL. No Carson Daly required. But I guess that's the fate of any good media meme . . . you can be the first to discover a trend, but if that trend is really significant, it'll take on a life of it's own.